The present invention relates to wireless network service mediation services. More specifically, the invention relates to a system and method for identifying content services.
It is becoming increasingly common for content to be provided to mobile terminals operating in wireless communication systems, for the purpose of providing mobile terminal users with up-to-date information. Network operators are currently providing information services relating to stock prices, sports, news updates, and the like. Initially, network operators provided such information services by using specific messaging services such as the Short Message Service (SMS). More recently, mobile communication systems have begun to support mobile access to the Internet.
Various communication protocols, including the Wireless Application Protocol (WAP), have been developed to provide mobile access to the Internet. When utilizing WAP protocol for communication, a mobile terminal communicates with a gateway by means of WAP, and the gateway communicates with content servers via HTTP to obtain content in the form of Wireless Mark-up Language (WML).
Proxy servers are traditionally used for intermediating between mobile devices and Internet network service applications and for securing the communication thereof. In more advanced systems, the proxy servers are used for improving the navigation and content delivery from the network application and for providing enhanced control and monitoring over these services by implementing for example caching and error detection techniques, access control, billing and reporting, etc.
The management and control of content servers and services requires the ability to identify the various content services residing on a server for various purposes such as tracking usage of a specific service; differentiated billing based on user-applications rather than host or domain; personalization, selective content adaptation and branding tailored for a specific application or surfing area, access control and caching, etc.
According to prior art methodologies the content identification of content services and applications are based on identifying the respective URL addresses of the specific content service. The URL is typically identified by a prefix (e.g. “www.somesite.com/news/*” could identify the sports section of a web-site). This method has serious shortcomings given that web services today frequently utilize dynamic URL's that are mechanically produced. Such automatic URL's frequently provide no hint as to the specific application being used (e.g. “www.somesite.com/ad6eb37433a9083ac?uid=452372” may identify any content service within the somesite.com website), hence differentiation between different services residing on the same host is frequently impossible. Furthermore with URL-based identification methodology, whenever the URL address structure is changed or the hosting location of the service is changed, the proxy server cannot find the correlation between old and new URL representations. Also, if the proxy contains configurations that identify the service e.g. by URL or URL prefix, these configurations may not be sufficient for identifying the service or specific sections within the service, as the URL may have no unique pattern which identifies it. For this reason, this methodology is not suitable for content providers implementing dynamic URL techniques. The dynamic URL consists of changing code numbers, that only the content provider itself can identify in real-time, hence it is impossible for proxy servers to relate the dynamic URL codes (when visited by the client) to the specific content or service.
For example, suppose a proxy server with access control utilities aimed at restricting mobile users' access to specific content information or services according to predetermined rules. These rules may relate to security restrictions, payment requirements or any customized restrictions (such as age restriction to sex-related content). Such proxy would require a robust, configurable and maintainable method for identifying the various applications within the mobile content sites.
It is a main object of the invention to avoid the limitation of prior art proxy servers and enable content services identification for content providers that utilize dynamic URL techniques or that require robust tracking of services across changing URL representations.